Cinnamon Ass - Reborn Like a Zombie

Madlax Episode 1 - dance

Opening - Hitomi no Kakera (FictionJunction YUUKA) - a bit too much like Shoot (Yzak's image song from Gundam Seed) for my liking, but still rather nice song. Trippy animation, too - and I like the bullet trails.
Ending - inside your heart (same again) - floating nude ladies aren't particularly exciting (!), and the chorus of the song's a bit dull. Meh.

Is it just me, or are there far too many series beginning with the letter m this season? Melody of Oblivion, Madlax, Mars Daybreak, Monster, Mahou Shoujo Tai Arusu, Midori no Hibi...

I have a small confession to make. I like .Hack//Sign. For about a year after I first watched the show I despised it, then watched the first DVD and became hopelessly addicted to it - the commercial subs make it make sense, for one. Never much cared for the slightly stilted nature of Noir, but .Hack//Sign worked much better when I thought of it more as a drama than an actual MMORPG sort of thing (just wait 'til I get around to watching Ragnarok...).

Anyway, that over with, Madlax is the latest thing from Bee Train, who are almost Gonzo-like in their adherence to style-over-substance - except take the tits and mecha out of Gonzo and replace them with blaring music and slight shoujo-ai connotations, plus vaguely nonsensical plotlines. Madlax sees the return of Yuki Kajiura (current darling of anime music fans (including me) since she made it big with Noir and .Hack//Sign, although she also scored the second Kimagure Orange Road movie and Aquarian Age) as the blaring music composer, and a throwback to Noir in character designs and dynamics.

Except we don't get quite all that in the first episode. The first episode is entirely devoted to Madlax, a blonde special ops agent, as she abseils into the jungle and retrieves some data in the midsts of a war. After a nonsensical prologue with a little girl and a doll that will no doubt have some great significance to come, we get a fairly average storyline with fluctuating animation (great explosions and Madlax animation, Pete looks pretty stilted though) and character design quality (weird noses, but then I like Esca-style noses you can ski down, so what do I know?), and some typically ludicrous Bee Train touches - Madlax is the PERFECT agent, she can lipread, second guess the enemy at every turn, shoot targets dead-on, has strange visions of books and soldiers with swirly CG effects, and THEN she dresses up in a cocktail dress and defeats a small army contingent with her eyes closed and without a scratch while wondering what she wants for dinner.

I know the world and his wife hated Madlax episode 1 but, true to form, I quite enjoyed it. It's pure hokum, incredibly over-the-top and ripped off from everything else Bee Train has ever done, but I like Madlax (although she's obviously a bit messed up), I'm interested in seeing what plot there will be (there's a guy with a stupid mask in the promo artwork - he MUST be cool), and the music is at least pretty good, although pretty inappropriate at times.

Posted by BluWacky at April 19, 2004 09:42 AM